Project 1

As the story I wrote this week is very much concerned with sound--of people's voices and accents, of urbanization, of the echoes of a valley--I decided to not post it here and leave it as a heard, but not read piece. Below are some thoughts I had about the song and the story.

In creating my story for the "Down in the Valley" project, I tried to make sure various components of the song shone through in my piece. I included a few referents to the song, but mainly I focused on recreating the mood and not pulling out specific textual components of the song. In trying to capture the mood, I wanted both the sound and the lyrics of the song to make it into my work.

The sound of the song struck me almost as waltzing music. This in conjunction with the line, "throw your arms round me," led me to want to establish a physical relationship early on in my story. I did not think such a component should dominate the piece, so I decided to have it fizzle out as the story progressed. This created an evolution of the speaker's love from a physical obsession to a more fanatic, manic one. 

Having established the romantic component of the song in my piece, I wanted to complete the song's juxtaposition of romantic longing with the natural world. I tried to blend the lovers' story with the story about the valley changing. First, I made much of the language concerning the speaker's ex be homonymous with language concerning nature--e.g. she is doing logs and roots in a math class, the speaker is removing logs and roots to blaze a trail through the forest.

My interpretation of the song's valley was that it was a source of obstruction, of blocking one from seeing the world beyond. In my story, the actual valley restricts the speaker from accessing his lover and her new life. Additionally, the speaker's metaphorical valley--an inability to let go--blinds him from the reality that his lover has, at least for a great portion of the story--moved on.

Finally, I wanted to match the ambiguity of the lovers' response in the song with ambiguity in my story. Hence I ended with the word "gawn," which is either "go on" (and touch me) or "gone" (as in, it's over). I have a clear belief about which the lover is indeed saying, which I fear I imposed in my pronunciation while reading the story, but I do not think there is necessarily a right answer.